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The Social Context of Cults
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Paul Joined: 13 Mar 2004 Posts: 72 |
Posted: Sat Jul 16, 2005 9:53 am Post subject: The Social Context of Cults |
The Social Context of Cults Skeptical Inquirer, July / August 2005 The Social Context of Cults Bounded Choice: True Believers and Charismatic Cults. By Janja Lalich. University of California Press, Berkeley, California, 2004. ISBN: 0-520-23194-5. 329 pp. Softcover, $21.95.
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When sketchy reports of a mass suicide in upscale Rancho Santa Fe (near San Diego) began circulating on March 26, 1997, sociologist and cult researcher Janja Lalich felt a knowing chill. Lalich stayed up all that night, calling fellow researchers on the East Coast, monitoring media reports, and trying numerous times to get onto the heavily trafficked Web site of the group she knew as "Bo Peep," a UFO cult she had been studying for the past three years. When she finally gained access to the site, Lalich recognized the Bo Peep group, phoned the San Diego police with information about them, and called one family whose daughter was among the deceased. By the next morning, she listened sadly to news reports confirming what she already knew. Thirty-nine members of the Bo Peep group, which the media had rechristened Heavens Gate (lifted in part from the name of their Web site, heavens gate.com), had committed mass suicide in order to fulfill their twenty-two-year mission to transcend beyond the need for human bodies. Lalich, an assistant professor of sociology at California State University Chico, and author of Crazy Therapies, fielded endless calls from the media in the following weeks and months, and did what she could to explain the cult's seemingly inexplicable act. However, Lalich was concerned that the public's understanding of cult members and leaders was incorrect at best, and misleading at worst. Cult members have traditionally been characterized as psychologically unbalanced, unintelligent, uneducated, easily led, blinded by faith, or manipulated by their leaders. Lalich knew from direct personal experience that none of this was true. Lalich is not just a cultic studies scholar, she was also a high-ranking member of a leftist political cult (the Democratic Worker's Party, or DWP) for ten years. Lalich's newest book, Bounded Choice: True Believers and Charismatic Cults, puts her unusual experience and extensive scholarship to excellent use. Bounded Choice presents a unique comparison of two charismatic cults: Heaven's Gate and the DWP-one a Christianity-infused UFO cult, the other a deeply atheistic Marxist political collective. In this fascinating study, Lalich combines inside knowledge of the everyday life of cult members with a scholarly capacity to clearly illuminate the intricate social processes involved in cult formation. This comparative study of two seemingly different (yet essentially similar) groups challenges nearly every assumption made about cults, "brainwashing," charismatic leaders, and the psychological profiles of cult members. Bounded Choice shows that cult members are not strange, nor psychologically impaired (at least when they enter the group), nor even moderately less intelligent than anyone else. In fact, Lalich's revolutionary approach reveals that intelligence, curiosity, psychological strength, idealism, commitment, and heightened political and social awareness may indeed be prerequisites for cult membership. Bounded Choice also shows, surprisingly, that cult formation is not an unusual or nefarious process. In fact, it is similar to nearly every type of group formation, and is especially similar to the kinds of formations that occur in "total institutions" such as schools, fraternities and sororities, the military, mental institutions, and monasteries. Lalich's insightful "bounded choice" framework articulates the differences between normal group formation and cultic formation through the use of four crucial social dynamics. The first is charismatic authority that creates powerful emotional bonds between leaders and followers. The second is a transcendent, totalistic belief system that attracts and reinforces high-commitment individuals and behaviors. The third is a system of control, hierarchy, and regulatory mechanisms that ensure group cohesion. And the fourth is a system of influence that trains group members to adapt their thoughts, attitudes, and behaviors to the beliefs espoused by the group. One of the most interesting revelations is that cults are formed not through trickery, sleep deprivation, brutality, or mind-control, but through dedicated relationships and conscious agreements between members and leaders. With this bounded choice framework, Lalich shows how seemingly irrational or self-endangering decisions are actually an intrinsic part of a social context that makes perfect sense to cult members. In fact, Lalich states that these decisions are often consistent with cult members' highest aspirations. This book will certainly reshape scholarly thinking about cults and cult members. However, because it is accessibly written, it will also be important to former cult members, families of current members, therapists, and anyone who wants to understand how a normal person can become a fervently dedicated true believer. In this era of increasing factionalism and religio-political extremism, Bounded Choice can also help us understand how some true believers can be transformed into fully deployable agents who may commit their very lives to extreme or violent causes. As a "failed" former member of a New Age cult (I was locked out for disobedience), I was fascinated to read about the day-to-day workings of two other cults: one religious, the other atheist. Lalich's clear-eyed approach to the intricacies of cult formation helped me to deepen and expand my understanding of how and why groups form, cohere, or disband. Lalich's balanced, empathetic treatment of leaders and followers in these groups does what excellent writing should do: it helps us see ourselves. Most important, it helps us challenge myths about cults, and enables us to see cult members not as lost or expendable souls, but as valuable people whose absence robs us of potentially committed, idealistic, and visionary members of society. With her combination of extensive scholarship and extensive personal experience, Lalich is perhaps our best available interpreter and theoretician of the cult phenomenon.. Karla McLaren is author of nine titles in the metaphysical genre. She recently ended her New Age career and is currently pursuing a master's degree in sociology; she wrote "Bridging the Chasm between Two Cultures" in our May/June 2004 issue
http://www.csicop.org/si/
gyaniwasi Joined: 22 Feb 2004 Posts: 167 |
Posted: Sun Jul 17, 2005 12:24 pm Post subject: |
Paul, Good post. My first reaction is an observation on the four criteria differentiating normal from cultic group formation:
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The first is charismatic authority that creates powerful emotional bonds between leaders and followers. The second is a transcendent, totalistic belief system that attracts and reinforces high-commitment individuals and behaviors. The third is a system of control, hierarchy, and regulatory mechanisms that ensure group cohesion. And the fourth is a system of influence that trains group members to adapt their thoughts, attitudes, and behaviors to the beliefs espoused by the group.
These same four criteria can be applied to established religions like Christianity and Islam, especially the fundamentalist sects of those religions. Where, then, does that leave all the 'good people' who attend churches and mosques? What is the essential difference between the quality of their constructs and that of the BKs and PBKs? Gy _________________ "Those were the days my friend ...."
zhukov Joined: 10 Apr 2004 Posts: 86 |
Posted: Fri Jul 22, 2005 7:05 am Post subject: |
^^^ Yeah what IS the difference. Good question....
gyaniwasi Joined: 22 Feb 2004 Posts: 167 |
Posted: Fri Jul 22, 2005 8:38 pm Post subject: |
On further thought Zhukov, I think the major essential difference is the declaration that "You are meeting face to face with Shiv Baba, the Father of all souls." Faith in that declaration is what made/makes the difference between the "real" BKs and those who have just a "bhakti experience" after completing the 7 days course. The criteria listed above assumes that one's faith is based on human interaction rather than a direct Divine intervention like that claimed by the BKs. The difference can be subtle but powerful and that is how I think we got "caught." I think the closest comparison I can make from the path of western bhakti is the question asked by the Christ soul to his disciples and answered by Peter: "And whom do you say I am?" ; "Thou art the Christ, son of the living God." And, we are told, on that quality of Faith was the Christian religion founded. Today, Christians have to be satisfied with the Holy Ghost version of Christ. The difference between the Christians and other paths (cults?) of Bhakti and the BKs is faith in that claim to immediacy of access to the Supreme Soul in the corporeal world through a meeting in Madhuban. At least that was how I saw it in the mid seventies when I experienced the path. It is often difficult or nigh impossible for an xbk to convey the reality of this difference to the outsider or those who have never assumed such faith.; and if we reflect on xbk posts on this site, it takes years to work that belief out of your system and experience another, so that we tend to retain an emotional attachment to the BK 'construct' - since it is the closest we came to experiencing God - and live with the contradictions between our "hearts" and our "heads." Sometime ago there was a member named Casa who raised this dilemma. I guess the road to "recovery" is long and full of diversions and placebos. A pragmatist might say "well if some of it works for you keep it and discard the rest!" I understand that is also the modern stand of the BKs (not so, long ago, if you really wanted to follow the path). For me, unfortunately, I find it difficult to selectively accept or reform what I once held as sacred knowledge. There is something about integrity that bothers me there.... Paul, any comments? Does anyone else experience that dilemma? Whal, if you're reading this let me commend you on your post on spiritual growth made in the forum "Any & Everything." I started a special reply to it but didn't get to finish it. Now that I have written this I think the "dilemma" I've mentioned is one I wanted to ask you about. I've been raising it since last year in "The Messenger and the Message" in the xbk discussion forum. Gy _________________ "Those were the days my friend ...."
ex-london Joined: 18 Jul 2005 Posts: 131 |
Posted: Sat Sep 17, 2005 11:43 pm Post subject: The Cult of Western Consumer Materialism |
The question that always used to comes to my mind when the Cult Bashers climbed on board the scene in the early to mid-80s was, " OK, what about the The Cult of Western Consumer Materialism ? " " If you want me to bail out of one cult called Brahma Kumaris, which cult do you want me to sign up for next? " As a cult, " The Cult of Western Consumer Materialism " is a pretty crazy - and ultimately *THE* most destructive cult ever invented. It has every defined element of cultdom going. [ Indeed, it is probably a Satanic Cult in itself! ] Such is its violence and vanity though that, like all Cults, the Western Consumer Materialist believe they and they only are the rational believers of the whole truth and apprear to be unstoppable in their desire to forcibly convert every community on the planet through either force, threat or punishment. They have their own Gods and Goddess of Wealth and Power, priesthoods in the media that sustain the worship of them, Temples of Consumption and Material theology, even their own creation, destruction and ascention myths! Funny how they never seem to notice those similarities to the other less dominant and successful cults they persecute.
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